Greetings,

 

Not everyone's gonna like what I'm gonna say here, but I gotta do it anyway and I might use some advice as well. What I wanna talk about here is all about perverted market of websites and a lot of web design/development clients being complete sh*itheads. I started programming and being interested in IT overall approx 15 years ago, and past two years I've been intensively studying web design and development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Adobe CS). While doing that I was involved in quite a few small jobs like fixing up, writing scripts, implementing CMS'es, shopping carts etc to the websites of my friends and people I know. This wasn't profitable at all, since I considered myself still learning thus doing most of the things for free and neither I considered adding all that stuff to my portfolio, since there practically wasn't any completely custom and impressive project among it. Lately I decided that I was ready to bring it to the next level. Getting a full-time job was pretty much mission impossible, since I had no official credibility so to speak and a bunch of shiny papers/diplomas/certifications to impress a potential employer. I decided to go freelance and that's when a row of disappointments began. I spent some time on building myself a few show websites, just to sit in my portfolio and then there was a time to let the world to know about myself and get some clients. I registered my website on several directories, wasted some money on google adWords, spent some time in business forums and went to several business networking breakfasts and I have to say, whether it's my luck or something but I didn't found a single client, however encountered all sorts of imbeciles.

Out of all the people I've met during that time at least 10 of them claimed to be web designers, but nothing could be further from the truth, because most of those people had franchises of something like activwebdesign.com and such and they told me that they only work with templates and "automated" tools provided by the franchise, and they proudly called themselves web designers and developers and guess what - they had loads of clients. Whenever I tried to touch a topic like hand-coding, PHP, JavaScript and similar - they would just blink at me with empty face expressions telling that they don't know **** about those things. Most of the people I met on forums and on meetings were doing things like marketing, sales, accounting, SEO and their attitude was like: why would I need custom web design if I can get myself something like Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal and drop a theme on top? They even went ahead as far as speaking about "e-commerce" websites that they've "built" in just a few hours using automated tools.

So my question is, what exactly do you have to put in your portfolio, what kind of miracle application so it would attract attention and impress potential clients (majority of which probably with attitude "facebook is my business page"). I thought about coding a CMS from scratch with already built in shopping cart and all that e-commerce website needs, I thought it would be a spark in my portfolio, but then I heard such opinions as "why to reinvent the wheel" that "Joomla + some open cart" is everything that one can need. I thought that such primates should like shiny things and animation, so I spent a week working on a Flash project with some heavy 3D, and after that some jerkoff told me that "it loads too slow", that is 10-20 seconds is too much for him to wait. So WTF? Are real web designers/developers really loosing battle to open source CMS'es and social networking websites?

Being said that I would like to add something on a completely different note. I never give up, and if I decided to get the piece of the action and invested loads of time in in - I will get it. There are ways to remind all of those wise-ass clients and template "specialists" of what kind of consequences their ignorance can bring. I remember I was a reckless kid when studying in university, and wherever my and my pals concentrated our attentions - servers cracked. Since then I've developed much more constructive thinking, that usually comes with age, but I didn't forget what I've learned and I have quite a few tricks up my sleeve if I ever need them. So what do you think, is it a good way to attract the clients attention by showing how buggy his website/server is and that load of script-kiddies are just waiting for that kind of info? I mean let's be fair - governments screw as in the ass and make us smile, banks invent the money out of a thin air and enslave us - everyone uses their skills/assets and there is no actual morality in capitalism. So my question is why shouldn't we use our skills to get some respect?

So, I'm still looking for some idea for my portfolio, that involves some fancy JavaScript/PHP coding, if you guys have any ideas, you're welcome to share it with me.

I do agree with you to an extent, but coming from being a beginner at this all, I found that you can learn from using templates and code snippets and open source cms. When you start in this way and a client asks something that is not easy to add on to a cms ect. then that is where a real web designer / developer plays there part in coding that little bit of uniqueness for that client. I am learning more code now. Wish I learned it before this would have been more useful as I understand more. Time is money and people / clients don't seem to be willing to pay for unique cms. Most of them have done there research and just want a good job on the cheap. Make me a custom Wordpress theme. I have installed wordpress. This is not the case all the time but I have come across a few wise ass-sss. Correct me if you i'm wrong anywhere.

Contact small businesses in your area. Ask them to refer you, maybe even throw in an incentive. Contact larger design agencies, some of them like to hire freelancers for smaller jobs or when they have too much.

 

For your portfolio, depends who you want to attract. jQuery and "flashiness" might not persuade a potential client to go with you, but if its something unique then you will attract the eyes of other designers

I'm not really sure how to contact local businesses because I hate cold calls and I'm not really sure how to compose an email so it wouldn't be considered spam. Besides, I've been to quite a few business network meetings with those "local businesses" as I wrote in my first post. Well, I guess local web design agencies is the last thing to try. If that fails I'm probably gonna stop being a nice guy and remind those arrogant shmucks what a real old-school programmer is and that internet is our playground.